Electropolymerization of layer-by-layer precursor polymer films

The layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly has been used to fabricate polymer thin films on any solid substrates. The multilayer polymer thin films are constructed by alternating adsorption of anionic and cationic polymers. Polyelectrolyte multilayer ultrathin films containing anionic poly[2-(thiophen-3-yl) ethyl methacrylate-co-methacrylic acid]; P(TEM-co-MA) and cationic poly[4-(9H-carbazol-9-yl)-N-butyl-4-vinyl pyridium bromide]; P4VPCBZ, were fabricated. The growth of multilayer ultrathin films was followed by UV-Vis absorption spectrophotometer and surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (SPR). The deposition of P(TEM-co-MA)/P4VPCBZ as multilayer self-assembled ultrathin films regularly grow which showed linear growth of absorbance and thickness with increasing the number of layer pair. Cross-linking of the layers was verified by cyclic voltammetry (CV), UV-Vis spectrophotometry and electrochemical surface plasmon resonance (EC-SPR) spectroscopy with good electro-copolymerizability. This was verified by spectroelectrochemistry. The SPR angular-reflectivity measurement resulted in shifts to a higher reflectivity according to the change in the dielectric constant of the electropolymerized film. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.